MC professor urges seniors to row toward ‘Deep Water’ during 2022 Baccalaureate service
May 6, 2022
There is, Dr. John Gallagher told the Maryville College Class of 2022 during Friday night’s Baccalaureate sermon, a treasure beyond comprehension that lies beneath the foreboding surface of life’s deep waters.
Gallagher, who retires this month after 24 years as a professor of management, was selected by graduating seniors to deliver the traditional Baccalaureate address, which took place at 4 p.m. Friday in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts. With Commencement scheduled for Saturday, May 7, the Baccalaureate service was an intimate and reverential time of reflection for the Class of 2022.
Gallagher: ‘Don’t fear the deep’
After an introduction by MC President Bryan F. Coker, Gallagher delivered the traditional Baccalaureate sermon, expressing his gratitude for having been requested by the graduating seniors to deliver it.
Given his impending retirement, Gallagher — who joined the MC faculty in 1998, having earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville — noted the similarities between the sunset of collegiate careers: his own, and that of the Class of 2022.
“You are about to take your leave of this College and take your place in the wider world. I, too, am taking my leave of this place and perhaps taking my place in a somewhat smaller world,” Gallagher said. “But the fact that we are taking our leave together at this time, the spring of 2022, has a great deal of meaning for me … you are the class that will forever be in my heart as the class that ushered me to the door, and so you are at least a very special class to me personally.”
Gallagher opened his sermon by drawing on the Scripture lesson read by senior Nicholas Clifton — Luke 5:1-11. Noting that his sermon was titled “Deep Water,” Gallagher summarized the story of Jesus commanding Simon Peter and the other disciples to row out to deeper waters and lower their nets.
“The outcome is life-changing for Simon, as well as James and John, and most likely all the others,” Gallagher said. “In their minds, this command is pointless, but in the end, astonished at the number of fish they caught, they leave everything to follow Jesus.”
Their initial reluctance, he added, had nothing to do with fear — although fear of deep water is a common one, he pointed out. Whether it’s literal liquid or overwhelming circumstances in which individuals feel as if they’re “in over their heads,” deep waters are often seen as places to avoid.
Gallagher, however, challenged the assembled seniors to flip that thinking on its head.
“I am not going to say that you should simply confront and conquer your fears, or that we should ever just dismiss loss and suffering. Not at all,” he said. “But I am still going to say that I think you should seek to live as much of your life as possible in deep water. Why would I say such a thing? Well for one thing it’s possible that miracles happen there. Life-changing miracles.
“I am going to suggest that in this scripture passage, the disciples … see putting out into deep water as an exercise in futility. This is exactly what I have in mind when I suggest you spend as much of your life as you can seeking out the deep water; taking on whatever appears to be futile to others, whatever everyone else has given up on, or dismissed as impossible or too hard.”
While “Deep Water” was the title of Gallagher’s sermon, those places toward which he encouraged seniors to steer their ships weren’t without specificity. Given the increasing polarization of civic discourse around contemporary political and social topics, no “waters” seem more treacherous and difficult to navigate, he said, than the oceans of division.
“Deep water is where we must go to move beyond those differences, to heal those divides,” he said. “Living in deep water to me means seeing each other apart from differences. Apart from any differences of color, nationality, culture, language, religion, or religious denomination, and apart from any of our markers of identity, or genetics, or circumstances, or political persuasions, our particular experiences, or any of our deeply held convictions about what is good, and true, and right. One of the first steps towards living in this deep water is recognizing some things about each other that are not immediately obvious.
“When we do this — when we enlarge our capacity to take in more of others, when we reach out across our differences — we create something new: perhaps an insight, an understanding, a connection, or an experience that has never existed before … This is deep water. This is what I fear many of us would be inclined to dismiss as hopeless or futile. So, why would I urge this on us? It is a life of creativity, a life of imagination, a life of affirmation, a life of growth, a life of empathy, and a life of justice. It is a life of interdependence and abundance. A life where we need each other because that’s the only way we can haul up these nets. So full of fish. Nets so heavy, so full, so abundant, we cannot lift them alone.
“This is not anything heroic,” Gallagher added. “This is not some grand-scale project. This occurs moment by moment, with every breath we take and every encounter with someone else. This is what, in the Christian tradition, we rightly call ‘loving your neighbor.’”
Nolazco: ‘I am beyond proud to be here’
Senior class President Lesli Nolazco, in offering the position’s traditional remarks, noted that the path taken by the Class of 2022 has been filled with challenges they never expected: chief among them COVID-19.
The pandemic was mentioned by name only once, when Gallagher joked that in asking him to deliver the sermon, students urged him not to talk about it. Nolazco did make reference to the spring of 2020, however, when students “left for a two-week-long spring break and never came back.”
“It amazes me the trials and tribulations and memories that have brought us here,” she continued. “I know there are many people who have all sorts of feelings at this moment, the evening before the big day — some bittersweet, some anxious and some excited to ring in this huge accomplishment.”
In sharing a passage from Joshua 1:9 — “be strong and be courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” — Nolazco extolled her classmates to draw strength from faith and the bonds that have united them over the past for years: “I am beyond proud to be here before all of you, and I am more than excited to see us walk the stage tomorrow and all the amazing things we will accomplish, and to see all of us take over the world with continued kindness, perseverance and hard work.”
Nolazco, a psychology and human resources double major from Lenoir City, is one of nearly 200 seniors who will participate in this year’s Commencement ceremony. But even in the bittersweet parting of graduates who have bonded so tightly over the past four years, Nolazco added, there is gratitude to be found.
“Man, am I glad to have this place and these people to make saying ‘see you later’ so hard,” she said.The service closed with the Prayer of Thanksgiving delivered by senior Grant Agnew, followed by the Lord’s Prayer, benediction music by senior Michael Place and the benediction itself by McKee. A senior barbecue followed the service, the final event of Commencement week before graduation takes place.
